<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PQnWHpXV3IPsT8rLi3nQsBKOHol-IIhP/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> So, traditionally, before any big Dharma teaching, you have to offer a mandala to the teacher and to the lineage, which is like, in the old days, you would take all of your wealth that you had, you'd sell all of your property, you would turn it all into gold dust, and you would bring this big pile of gold dust, and you would set it at the feet of your teacher. representing that there is no worldly thing that is more valuable than the teaching that you are about to receive. And so in the old days, it was much harder to get these teachings than now. Now, I don't know. I don't know what you're charging me today. But it's definitely not all of your wealth and worldly possessions. And it would be one-on-one or maybe a couple students to a teacher. and they would only give this teaching to you after many years of, I don't know, building houses and then tearing them down. Which we are reinstilling this. At Diamond Mountain, if you want to come and build a house, we'll tear it down for you. Just kidding. But in your mind, when you're doing this prayer, you know, try and recall the value of the teaching and how, you know, if you actually use these teachings, you can reach a state of deathlessness and a state beyond all pain. and you can take everybody that you love there too. And so it is the most priceless thing. And there is nothing that you have right now that will equal it. There's nothing you can give for this teaching, but to practice it really. So while you're doing this prayer, just think a little bit about all the people of the lineage who carried these teachings on in a pure way, from teacher to student, unbroken, until they reached your ears, and how maybe grateful you are that you are in this room today. All right. Satsang with Mooji NERDEN YEN PATHY SANGY SHEMDU 미세오 말 미이로 군 남따 Sipa Juhansho Tunggurana Mandala Kamilatayami And the second prayer that we'll do is just to get our intention right. so whatever we hear in these next eight days of teachings, we will use to save all beings. SANGYE CHURANG SOKI CHOK NAVLA CHANG CHU BAR DU DANG MI KYAV SUCHI DAG HI CHURNYEN PIR PESUNAM KI DRO LA VEN CHIR SANGYE DRUMPAR SHO Sange Chudang Sokhi Choknam La Chanchu Bardhu Dagmi Kya Suci Dagi Chinyengi Pe Sunam Ki Dharad and Chir Sange Druparsho Sange Chudang Sokhi Choknam La You might want to turn your cell phones off. Okay. Okay. Welcome. Thank you for coming. Can you hear in the back? You can hear okay? No. A little bit louder, I think. Can you hear? I like to hear. Okay. I'll try I'll try this way I like this way anyway because I can wake you up no I say it pops too much right no okay thank you for coming and we'd like to thank all the people who worked so hard to get the place ready I heard some people were up all night last night they finished at 8 this morning getting things ready especially outside with the with the paintings and I can't help but say those paintings are part of an exhibit that will be taking place here during the coming weeks and there'll be a reception for the paintings on the 29th, Saturday the 29th two weeks from last Saturday and they'll be releasing a very beautiful big coffee table book about Tibetan art and the life of the teacher of the first Dalai Lama, Jansang Kapa. So if you have time, we'd like to invite you. And it's free, you just come. And it's going to be sort of a wild party, I think, here. Two Saturdays from now. And that's a long story, we'll talk more about it later. But they worked all night last night, and I know a lot of people have worked very hard. I'd like to review a couple of the rules of the class before we get into the class, okay? And to say, normally we don't charge for classes. Our university is free, and my teacher never charged me. You know, I studied for 30 years, no one ever asked me for a penny. And in the monastery, the teacher actually has to support the student. So, but we had a vision when we started teaching yoga classes five years ago. In three-year retreat, we had a vision that we should charge for these type of classes to limit the audience to people who are really serious, and we hope to reach teachers of yoga. So really the money is just sort of a screen to make it difficult to get here easily. And we prefer not to charge, and normally we don't charge. but it was meant to limit the number of people who could be in the class. Because we wanted to do a real teacher's training course. We wanted to teach yoga in a way that was designed for people who are going to teach other people. So we're trying to get people here who are serious and people who will be willing to pass it on. Normally we don't have a chance, because of our schedule and all the things we have to do, we don't have a chance to teach a subject more than once. So we're only planning to teach Hatha Yoga Pradipika one time. And then we would like to assure that the people who listen will pass it on to other people, and will take responsibility to pass it on to other people. So the first thing I'd like to say is that we consider it a teacher training course. You should come out of the class able to teach it as well as you heard it. And that means you have to take really good notes, and you have to pay really good attention, and you shouldn't miss any of the classes, you shouldn't be late, you shouldn't space out when it gets hot, or you're tired a week from now. You should do it for someone else. You should do it for the people who come after you, right? This is the greatest text on yoga ever written in India, better than the Yoga Sutra. And now you have a chance to learn it from a true lineage. We have the lineage. We are Naropa's lineage. We can name the teachers back to the Naropa. And then you have to... By the way, we are 41, right? 40 or 41? I don't remember. But every two weeks we do all the prayers to all the 40 generations. And so you're getting a very pure transmission. And you have to think, when you listen, you have to think, how would I teach this myself? How am I going to teach this myself when I teach it to my students? And you have to think like that. And you have to absorb it that way. We won't have a chance to go over it again. It's a chance of a lifetime. And then this is the final course of the entire series. So it took four years, I think. this is also, I think, the most important of the four courses. And it's important for you to listen carefully. If you haven't got the first three courses, you should take them from one of the YSI teachers. And you have to really concentrate as if you were going to teach it next week, which we hope that you will. So we give you homeworks. They take hundreds and hundreds of hours. We've spent thousands of hours on these texts. We started translating the Hatha Yoga Padibhika eight years ago in a three-year retreat. And we memorized it and we translated it. And it's very important for you to do the homeworks, to read the readings, to learn what we teach. In Tibet, there's a tradition that you review it three times before the next day. So, you know, when you go home after the class, look at it one time before you sleep, and then when you get up, look at it again. And then do the homework. The homework is designed to be a very good review of the class. And don't get behind on the homeworks. Start right away and do the homeworks. And then there will be quizzes, and you have to do them, okay? We encourage you to do the homeworks together. we encourage you to cheat on the homeworks. So we ask you, find another person in the class or a couple of people to do the homeworks with. We also ask that you do them with someone you don't know. So you have carte blanche to wander around the room. If you feel a karmic connection with someone, or someone looks to you nice, or you can just ask them. It's not that I would talk to you normally. It's that they told us we had to talk to you. So would you like to go to Starbucks tomorrow? And would you like to do homework together? And we want that to happen. Because then people make connections from all over the world. And then it makes this beautiful network of people. There are people here who are teaching in Beijing. There are people teaching Argentina. I mean, all over the world, people just meet people in these classes. then they end up next week teaching in Buenos Aires or someplace cool like that. It happens. It happens all the time in these classes. And keep switching around to new people. Every couple of days say, I already know you, so I'm going to ask somebody else. Maybe just make bigger groups. Yeah. And do that. We've walked into McDonald's and seen 50 people that are working on the homework, it's really cool. So, enjoy each other's company. We are here in a short life, life is so short, and we're all so shy to talk to each other, and this is a beautiful excuse to get to know each other. Okay, so do that. Work hard, learn the material well, pass it on to others. We would like nothing more than to see that you are teaching it to other people. Okay, and if we can do anything or YSI can do anything to help you. You can steal all the materials, you can copy everything, you can... Kimberly didn't hear that. Yoka, we just want you to spread it in the world. So learn it well and spread it well and spread it with a good spirit and a happy spirit. So we thought that the first thing we should talk about is what happened so far. Like, where are we in the course? Where are we in the Hatha Yoga Padithika? Maybe it's good to say what Hatha Yoga Padithika means, right? So, Ha means what? Sun. Sun, Ta means moon. Hatha means the union or the yoga of sun and moon. And it has many meanings that we'll be learning. In this class, in this course, it'll be the red element and the white element within the body. there's a red element lower in the body and a white element higher in the body and in this particular course there'll be a lot of emphasis on that sun and that moon that moon is called Ribongchen in Tibetan and Shashin in Sanskrit means what? the one who has the rabbit Shashin so they see the moon as somebody that has the rabbit in it instead of the man in the moon or the maid of cheese or something they see rabbits. So we'll be learning a lot about the union of the sun and the moon in terms of the red and white elements in this particular course, of the last of the courses of the Hattayoga Padipika. And then Padipika means like lamp or flashlight, and you can't really appreciate it unless you live in a desert and it's dark and you go out to go to the bathroom or something and there's cactus all over and you can get into some really bad situations. it's good to have a Pradipika so Pradipika means like a a lantern or a flashlight that shows you how to join the sun and the moon that's the meaning of the name of this book Hatha Yoga Pradipika when Master Iyengar called his book Light on Yoga he was stealing the word Pradipika so the book starts out the first three chapters really are about Hatha Yoga and they teach you about what is hatha yoga? In Tibet, hatha was translated as sentap. We're going to ask you to repeat words and you're going to say them and it'll put a seed in your mind and three years from now you'll start studying Tibet and so on. So say it sentap. Sentap. Sentap means kick ass. It does. It really does. It's a very specific word and it means like rough, tough, what do you call it? camp for school. But sen means that. Sen-tap means, hat-ta means a boot camp method of achieving your goals. And the point is that hat-ta, you know, nowadays hat-ta means easy yoga. But in the old days hat-ta means tough yoga, demanding yoga. And it means that you you get at the mind through the body. You're trying to get at the mind through the body. In our monasteries, you study 20 years, you do geshe, you do it all in the mind. And then they allow you to start yoga. After 20 years, they allow you to start yoga. You're not allowed to do yoga for 20 years. You go from the mind to the body. But in hatha, you go from the body to the mind. You use some kind of drastic means. You can say drastic means. You start with the body, and then you work to the mind. That's Hatha, okay? The first three chapters of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika are about Hatha Yoga, which means physical means, drastic physical means, to try to get your mind through your arm and your leg and your toes, you know, like that. Twist your body around and try to change your mind, right? They start the book by explaining about the lineage, right? Like, where did this yoga come from? and who taught it first and how has it come down to us this is called parampara say parampara in Sanskrit and it means the teachers who have passed it down from teacher to student from teacher to student for in our case 40 generations up to the current time so you are now part of that lineage you are part of the parampara and in India that you don't study something unless you know it has an authentic lineage that has never been broken. And this lineage has not been broken. We were initiated into Naropa's lineage and we were taught yoga in our monastery. And that goes back 40 generations to the lineage of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. So in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, you will run into guys like Shavari and Chapati. And these are yogis of our own lineage. we just translated a book about Tsongkhapa. All these yogis showed up at the Munlam Chamo. They protected the first Munlam Chamo. That's why it went off so well. And that's like 1409 or something, right? And then Tsongkhapa had a vision of all these Mahasiddhas. It came to him and said, why do you think the party went so well? We protected it, the 80 Mahasiddhas. So you're a part of that lineage. It's a living lineage, right? So that's always you say, who's the lineage first? Then they get into the benefits of Hatha Yoga, and, ah, like, you don't have to die anymore. Okay? Like that. And we'll talk more about that later. Then, of course, they begin with asana. Okay? So asana, it becomes in the first chapter of the Hatha Yoga Divya. You go through the core asanas. And in the old days, there were fewer asanas, and they were done longer. And they were mostly aimed at making the body fit for meditation. So, there are core asanas in the Hatha Yoga Pitya, very beautiful ones. After that, they covered the diet for a proper yoga practice, what you should eat, what you shouldn't eat. I think the bottom line was eat healthy, eat light, eat things that make you strong. And a great deal of the diet depends on your personal body, right? Different bodies need different things. Even in the Hatha Yuga Padibhiki, they say, you can't tell everyone what to eat. You tell them, experiment with your food, and be like Gandhi, and experiment with your food, and then find ways to, find food that makes you feel healthy and strong. In Tibetan, they say, gyakchumam, nyambichumam, sachumam, dunibasiche. It means, don't eat for pride. are you going to be muscular, don't eat for desire. Lune bhashichir, Nagarjuna said that. Eat to maintain the body. Eat to make the body strong and healthy and light. So they give you a diet. Then he said something about making your practice regular. You should do it a little bit, but do it every day. Do your practice every day. We did a three-year retreat. We had the honor of David Swenson came and gave some classes to us. He could talk, we couldn't talk. It was the perfect situation for a teacher. And he was joking. He said, this lady came to me and said, I'd like to do yoga, but I don't have time. I can't come every day. I don't have time to do yoga every day. So he said, there's no problem. I have a yoga pill. And Americans like pills, you know, so I have a box of them here, you know, and he opened up the box, he gave me this little pill, he said, here, you just take the pill, you don't have to do all the practicing every day for hours, you know, don't worry about that, just take this yoga pill, you know. She said, that's all I have to do. He said, yeah, yeah, except just before you take it, do an hour of asanas each day, you know. And it's like that. So he's telling you you have to do, study practice, everyday study practice. That concludes pretty much the first, part of the first course. In each of the courses we gave, we skipped to the fourth chapter in each course. So the first three courses of this series, we always did part of one chapter and then we went to the fourth chapter, right? Why? What's the fourth chapter about? Yeah, Raja Yoga, okay? Or Royal Yoga, meaning yoga of the mind, really. So in the Hatha tradition, we go from the body to the mind. And in the Raja tradition, or the Tibetan tradition, we go from the mind to the body. In the Hatha yoga of the Deepika, the first three chapters are preparation, just to reach the fourth chapter, which is Raja yoga. So we moved into the fourth chapter, and we looked at Raja yoga, which you can say is the study of emptiness. You can call it the study of emptiness. And the whole fourth chapter starts out with an explanation of emptiness and different words for emptiness. So that's beautiful. In the second course we went through, we began the second chapter of the work and then we started into pranayama, breathing practices. How to do it, what's the proper food to eat if you're going to do pranayama. And the potential dangers of pranayama. Pranayama or breathing practices are particularly dangerous if you don't have a teacher. If you try to do them without proper instruction, they can make you, how do you say? Crazy. Okay. Then we went to the six kriyas. You can call them treatments. The kriyas are methods of balancing imbalances in your body, like your body has too much phlegm, too much bile, too much wind, any of the traditional humors. If you're a person who blows out a lot of mucus out of your nose during a yoga practice, or you're a person who tends to get agitated or your hands are shaking or like that, these are imbalances of the different humors of the body. So the second chapter, The Kriyas were mostly gross physical things like neti to address problems with your humors. And at the end of them, he says, do you remember what he said? He said, if you don't have a problem with your humors, you can skip this part. Like, you can just skip that part. Then he started through the eight Kumbhakas in the second chapter, and then in the third chapter, he started with mudras. Kumbhakas and mudras are similar. Kumbhaka in Tibetan is called Kao, say Kao. Or Bumbachan. And then it means to, practices to close the winds into a capsule. Or Kumbhaka can mean a vase. Right? And it's ways to bring your mind to a higher level by trapping the winds in the body. Okay? And then seals like mudras, which means, it's mudra, right? In Tibetan they're called chakya. Say chakya. So they are ways of closing off parts of your body to channel energies into different parts of the body. And again, those are all for higher purposes. They're not just to hold your breath for as long as you can or something like that. So that's basically a review of where we've been. We've been going through each of the first three chapters, And then, eating a little bit from the fourth chapter each time. Should I go to the next? What were you doing in this class? Huh? Okay. So now Lama Christi will start off on, what are we going to do in this class? What are we going to do in this class? Thank you. So in the last class, if you guys remember, we covered the first five of the ten mudras. And so in this last fourth course of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, we will cover the last five of the ten mudras in the third chapter. We split the third chapter into two, because the third chapter is really long. Would you like someone? So, Jalandhara Bandha is in there. Mullah Bandha is in there. Something called Viparita Karani, which is some upside-down thing, which we'll talk about. And then something called Vajrali and Amaroli and all these olis. And this is when everybody gets really, I don't know, they start to lean forward and pay attention because this is the sexy part of the Hatha Yoga Pradivaka. This is the part that there are some versions of the Hatha Yoga Pradivaka where they actually took these verses out because people said they weren't sattvic. They weren't pure practices. I think it really depends on who's looking at them whether or not they are pure practices. but it's mainly the practice of a partner, which is something that everyone is interested in, and you need a lot of training for. So we were going to talk about partner practice in general in this course, not just the physical part, which is the only thing that's covered in the Hatha Yoga verses, but more the, like, emotionally, how do you relate to a spiritual partner, and what is your goal for having a spiritual partner, and all the things that you would need in order to practice properly and purely with a partner. So we're going to talk about that in this course. Then, of course, we're going to tack on the final section of Chapter 4, which is the Emptiness Chapter of Hatha Yoga Pradipuka. And so we'll finish that up. And that has to do with some laya practices. What's laya? Dissolution. Right. It's practices of dissolution. It's how to dissolve the winds out from all the ends of the body, all into the central channel so that we can go into the direct perception of emptiness. And then the last part of the fourth chapter talks about what's it like when we reach our goals. What's it like to become a totally enlightened being who can emanate to every single person in the universe spontaneously and at the same time is totally immersed in a perfect direct perception of emptiness, at all times is in total bliss. You know, what's it like? We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it in this last chapter. So now, before we go on to this new stuff, we would like to talk about the flow of the Hatha Yoga Padipaka a little bit. Like, when you teach it to your students, it should make sense to you what Master Swat Marama was doing in each of the four chapters. Like, why did he start with bowing down to the lineage and bowing down to his teacher? You know? Why? What do you think? I mean, those of you who have been here for all three other courses should know all these questions by now. To show he was just a vessel for a lineage. Yeah, first of all, as an author, he wanted to show he was a vessel. He wanted to tell us, he does the paramparas to tell us that there's a proper lineage, right? To tell us that it's an unbroken stream and you can trust it. It works, it's authoritative, right? Then he says the only reason we do Hatha Yoga is to get to Raja Yoga. What's Hatha Yoga again? Yeah, Yoga is the sun and moon or sun top. Drastic means, forceful methods to get your inner winds where they want to go. So the only reason we practice physical yoga is to get to Raja Yoga, Royal Yoga. to get on the royal road, which is like the road of emptiness. To get our minds to see emptiness directly. That's the only reason you are down on your mats every single day. And that's what he says in the very beginning of the book. He establishes why we're doing our practice, which is, I think, important for every single yogi in the planet. You know, as you sit there on your cushion or as you sit there on your mat at the very beginning of your practice each day, You should know why you're there. It's not... Don't settle for a lesser goal when you're there. Don't settle for something like, I want to be more peaceful. No, I want to change this body from a body of total flesh and blood that's dying and getting older and has pains and has problems to something totally indestructible, made of light, that can save all beings. I want to change this mind from a mind that's totally afflicted all the time and gets angry and gets jealous and this and that, to a mind of pure love for every single face I see all the time. You know, a mind that just wants to give. That's, you know, that's what we should be thinking about as we sit down on our mats. And so he starts off the book like that. And this is why we are reading this book. And this is why I wrote this book, you know. So after that, he goes into the poses. But not to let you forget that that's the reason for the poses, right? Then he goes into food. Why? What is the flow from the yoga asanas to food? Haven't you noticed as yogis that as you start to do asana practice, you want to start eating healthier food? Like you start automatically, you don't want the cookies and cakes and candy, except for some people, which are like extraordinary things, who already have like bodies of fiber. It doesn't matter what they put in their own. But for the rest of us, it's like, I don't know, I went into a three-year retreat and I just got this craving for spinach, spinach, spinach. I never liked spinach in my life. And then all of a sudden, he was like, I need spinach. It's like your body starts telling you. If you have a regular daily practice, your body starts telling you what you need to eat. And so then automatically your mind will start going, oh, what should I eat now, you know? What is the best thing for my practice? And you start to see your body as more of a tool or vehicle for your practice and less of, I don't know, just eating for pleasure or society. We've got weird social customs in this country for food. Like, all our social interactions are surrounded by food, in a way. You know, like Thanksgiving is coming up, and my mom is coming. It's like, food, food, food, you know? And it changes when you become a yogi. That changes. You know, it's fuel now. It's fuel for your mind. It's fuel for your body. fueled for your next day's practice. So then, you start to become what the Tibetans call Layserumwa. Say Layserumwa. This means your body becomes fit or capable or able to practice. It's like you have trained your gross outer body enough that now you start to be able to do something like pranayama. which before either wouldn't have worked at all or would have caused you some kind of pain. Without the daily yoga practices of the asanas and without the regulation of your food and your diet and without a moral, ethical element, which he also covers in the first chapter, you can't do something like inner wind practices. You can't do pranayama because it will just... Your knots are so tied up in your channels that if you tried to do pranayama, it would only hurt you. Like the winds would go in the wrong direction. You know, so you have to get your body fit for the practice. And then you can start the breathing practices. And then as you do pranayamas, maybe you start to get more and more subtle about what is imbalanced in your body. What kind of subtle slight imbalances are there that are making my pranayama difficult to do? And then he introduces the Kriya practices. For those of us who have an excess of one or the other doshas. You know, bile or wind or phlegm. And that's what the Kriyas are for, to balance that out. So then what's next? Third chapter. Beginning of the third chapter, we start on the capsule practices. which is the retention, basically the retention of the breath. And using, taking the energy that we have learned in our pranayama practices, like we're starting to learn about something called kundalini, or we're starting to learn about something like prana, and we're starting to relate our pranayama practices less to the outer breath and more to some kind of inner flow within our body. So that's when we can jump from the second chapter to the third chapter. Like if you were teaching this to a student and you were actually guiding them through step by step from one practice to the next, you'd want to stop at pranayama for a while until you were sure that your student started to be able to feel the inner flows of their body. Like they weren't any longer working with the outer breath. They were actually entering into their inner body. And they were actually entering into their inner flows. And they understood what a mudra was. They understood that when they did this, whether their fingers were touching or not, something is touching. right like if you can do this and you can feel an energy going between your thumb and your first finger then you understand what a mudra is because you feel some kind of flow there right and that's the basis of the third chapter and until you feel that you shouldn't go on to the practices of the third chapter So then we're into the third chapter, mudras, where we're working with much more powerful levels of prana. Things that would be dangerous for people who weren't ready. And this includes the practice of a partner. You know, this is something that, it's a very intense practice, something that would be dangerous for people who weren't ready. You know, something that you need training for. So, only after all of that does Master Swat Marama go on to the fourth chapter, which is about what? It's about working with your mind. like all of these practices are subtler and subtler practices of working with our body like we go from the outside in we go from the gross physical body of asanas and food to a more inner body experience of the breath to an even more subtle body experience of the inner prana but it's still a physical thing the inner flows of our body are still a very subtle physical substance and they're considered working with the physical side, working with the method side. Then the fourth chapter is working with the wisdom side, with the mind, like how to understand emptiness. In the Tibetan system, this is reversed. In the Tibetan system, you work with emptiness for 20 years until you are ready to engage in a physical practice, until you are ready to do your first asana. They go about it the opposite way. You know? They prepare you in a completely opposite way. So in this class, because we are of both lineages, we are both of the Tibetan and Indian lineages, and because time is short, we have given you both every single course. We have given you a little bit of the body and a little bit of the mind every single time we've taught the Hatha Yoga Pradipa Gattin. That's why we divided the fourth chapter into four different parts. So that we could work with the body and the mind together. And this is the practice of people who have entered into highest yoga tantra. You have to work with the body and you have to work with the mind simultaneously because it's infinitely faster that way. You know? If you think about emptiness, something happens a little bit in your channels. Some kind of movement, some kind of shift towards the center. If you do physical practices like asanas or pranayama, or even the deeper physical practices of mudras, something shifts within your inner body. Something moves towards the center. But if you do both combined, if you think about emptiness as you are doing your deep mudra practices of your inner body, you are unstoppable. You are unstoppable. If you follow these practices, you will see emptiness directly. You will get to the state of a holy angel. It is inevitable if you follow these practices, right? Because they're the highest, most powerful practices. So that's the flow of Master Swatmarama's book. he leads us closer and closer to the ultimate goal of a body made of light and a mind filled with emptiness. Which we'll talk a little bit more about later on in this class. So, you can think of, I mean, just one immediate goal of yoga, you can think of opening the heart chakra, for example. and all of these twists and bends and back bends. If you could open the heart chakra for five minutes, you would be able to see all the worlds that are inhabited in the universe. In one moment, you would be able to see all of the worlds that have people in them that exist. In that moment that you open the heart chakra, And then at the same time, you can see the faces of every person that lives on those planets at the same moment. So try to imagine what that would be like, you know. And sometimes, you know, you get stuck in these headstands and backbends and the Sanskrit root for that, you know. And then you forget, you know, what are we trying to do? Why are we here? You know, if you did these practices well, if a person who knew how to do them taught you properly, then you could have an experience in your time on this world that you saw the face of every person, not just on this world, but on countless worlds, at the same moment, that your mind has this capacity. You were meant to be that. This is who we are meant to be. And what we are now is just sort of a stuck somewhere, a mistake or something. If you open the things which are tight, if you open the things which are blocked, and return them to their natural condition, then just sometimes try to think of how you would be if you could see everyone on this world, just in this world. If you could see all of them right now, if you could see their faces. And when you open the heart chakra, there's an emotion about it. You see their faces, but you love them in a way that you've never loved anybody in your life. You see? You love all of them in a way that you've never loved anyone in this life. And just imagine how how cool that would be. And then what would the rest of your life be like? If you had had that experience once for five minutes, how would you live after that? And what would you do after that? And this is what we're working towards. This is what we're trying to make happen. This is what all these yoga studios are for now. So sometimes dream about it. That's what the asanas are for. That's what we're doing here. And your mind has this capacity. It's blocked now. Your natural capacity is done. And you just have to remove the blocks and you'll return to your natural capacity. So sometimes dream about it when we're doing Sanskrit roots, okay? Sanskrit roots help because your channels are made of Sanskrit. But anyway, we were reviewing for the course and we remembered that we had not finished the last few verses of the last course, of what we were doing in the fourth chapter, actually, from the last course. And it is so beautiful that we didn't want to leave it. So if you look at your reading carefully, I think it's reading nine, okay? Your first reading is reading nine from last course. And there's just some beautiful things that we didn't want to leave you without them. So we're going to do some highlights from the last two readings that you didn't get because we went overtime in the last... They made us leave 11 or something like that. And if there's Diamond Mountain, we go to a turn street. But we thought that there was a few things, the Shindupangba, that would be improper. It would be, what do you call it? Too great a loss not to go back. And just look at them. So here we go. Arambasca, Gatascaiva, Parichayavapicha, Nishpati, Sarvayogesh, Syadavastha, Chaturstaya. Every yogi and yogini undergoes four different stages in the development of this practice. The initial stage, the formulative stage, the stage of becoming custom, and the stage of the final completion. These are called avastah. Say avastah. Amo means down or out. Off comes from it, away comes from it. And stah means to stand. Station comes from it, Pakistani comes from it. Avesta means four states that every yogi or yogini goes to during their practice. And these are really messed up in the modern yoga lineages. They have no clue what they are about. And they are very, very well preserved in the Tibetan tradition. And sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes our tradition has lost things that are kept very well in the Indian traditions. So really it's nice to have both traditions. But this particular teaching is very, very important, very beautiful, the four avastars. There are four states that every yogi goes through. And we worked really hard on it in many Starbucks to compare the Indian and the Tibetan systems and find what was the correct presentation of it. So we want to do a nice presentation of these four avastars. They're very famous. If you go to India and you study with some Indian yoga teacher, they'll be talking about the Chaturavastan, the four states. And then it's really important. If you can get a good teaching on it, it's like, oh man. It's just really, really stunning and really beautiful. And this is the power of the two lineages combined, I think. So Mama Kristi will start off. We'll kind of think switch off every stage or something. Sit. Yeah? Okay. Yes, Pa? All right. I'll say one more thing she wants me to talk more yeah? they don't want you to talk anymore alright Jamie hold on here Aha, okay. Generally, the four states, when you get tummo, when you get inner fire, kundalini, chandali, when you have inner fire, the purpose is that it will melt a certain element down from the tip of your head called, we call it the white element, right? And then that flows through your sushumna, through your central channel. It starts to drip down through your central channel. And as it comes down the central channel, you go to the four avastas. So the four avastas, the four states, are four steps that happen as this divine nectar is melting down the invisible channel that runs down in front of your spine. And then, as it comes down, you have certain experiences of high ecstasy. When you have a, what do you call it, sexual, what do you call it, orgasm, that's a, that's a, that ecstasy that finishes in a, in 30 seconds or a minute, or something. But, but if you do it with the other stars, you're in that state for hours at a time. You see? And then, that kind of ecstasy has this extraordinary power of understanding. You see? It's very weird. It's like you took a smart pill. You know? Now, if you can get this fluid coming down your central channel, suddenly you understand things that you never came close to understanding before. Suddenly you can see how the whole world is working. It's like, what's his name, the actor in The Matrix? The guy who can't act. Can't release. No, you have this... He suddenly figures out that the whole world is a computer program. He's been living in it his whole life. And suddenly he sees behind the reality of where it's coming from. And that will happen to you. If you have an Amistar experience, the ecstasy is a kind of wisdom. And suddenly you can see things that you never grasped before. You could invent a personal computer in your spare time in the bathroom. You know, like, your mind shifts completely. It's very interesting. You have this capacity. And when the ecstasy starts, in this kind of ecstasy, your mind gets smarter, you know? And you're a genius. And then you see into the very... You can see how all things come about. You can see into the future. you can see other worlds, everything. It's amazing. It's very cool. So it's not just a normal orgasm. It's like, no, it's like, it goes on for hours and you have deep insights into everything. It's cool. So these other stuff are interesting. Okay, here we go. Verse 70. Let's read. pierced, then bliss and emptiness come to us. We hear various types of sounds within the body arising spontaneously. So what does anahata mean? So do you see the word unstruck in the verse? Because it's in the Sanskrit. For those of you who are interested in Sanskrit, what do you think anahata means here? What does unstruck mean really? It's the word for spontaneous here. It's interesting for those of you who are interested in Sanskrit. it. The vichitra, the various phanako sounds, dehe, within the body, nahata, spontaneously arise. It's beautiful. So first we're going to talk about the first two words, brahata, Brahmagranti. Brahmagranti means the knot of the pure one. We've had a Brahmadvara before. Do you remember where? Yeah. Brahmadvara is the door of the pure one. And it's the upper opening of the central channel at like this kind of hole at the tip of the head. Okay. And Brahma Granti is not here. Okay. Because we've had this before. It's exactly the opposite place of the body. It's at the base of the spine. Right. They also call Brahma Nadi is another name. It's a synonym for the central channel. Nadi is channel. Right. So you get the knot of the pure one at the base of the central channel, and then you get the door of the pure one at the top of the central channel, right? So don't confuse the two, right? So in the Tibetan system of the four stages of bliss, first comes a downward flow and then comes an upward flow, right? They say, So basically the first stages of, the first of the four stages of bliss happened on a downward flow. from the tip of the head to the throat, from the throat to the heart, from the heart to the navel, from the navel to the tip of the jewel, which is the tip of the sexual organ, whether it be male or female. But here, this is the first stage of bliss, and they're talking about it at the base of the spine. So there is a corresponding four stages of bliss that happens in an upward flow. So this is actually happening after the first flow has fallen down, which is actually the more unstable of the flows. Like it happens in a nanosecond. Like if you think about whenever you have an orgasm, for instance, it's already happening to you. Those four stages of bliss are already happening to you. You just don't know it. Because you can't pay attention because it's going too fast. Really. Like there are four stages in there somewhere. And it's starting at the tip of your head. And you just never were aware of it before. Right? And only when you become like really good at following the inner flows of the body. Are you able to slow down that experience enough. that you could actually follow the bliss as it falls from the tip of the head to the throat, or the throat to the navel, or the navel, you know, throat to the heart, heart to the navel. But the more important, maybe, of the four stages of bliss are the upward flow. Because those are the ones that are going to remain, as Geshe Michael says, for hours. Those are the ones that you can actually go into a stable state of meditation on. So after the bliss has fallen all the way down your central channel, to the very end of your central channel, it rises back upwards. And this is the state where it's moving from, we would say, the tip of the jewel up to the navel. And you reach a stage which in the Tibetan they just call emptiness. I mean, sorry, they just call bliss. but here they're calling bliss and emptiness. Deitong, or Ananda Shunya. Say Ananda. Shunya. And this is the first stage. And it's really important that the Dhajata Yoga Pradipika joins bliss and emptiness at this first stage. Because this is the basis of the highest yoga tantra. This is a foundational practice of the highest yoga tantra. You use bliss to perceive emptiness. So, as the central channel opens, yes, there is a physical feeling of bliss. It is very similar to any other physical feeling of bliss that you have had in the past. It starts out like that. You know, it starts out like a blissful sexual experience or something like that. That's what it feels like for the central channel to open. It feels blissful. But it doesn't stay as just a physical sensation. Because what you do at that point is when you're feeling that physical sensation of bliss, you take your mind and you focus on the emptiness of that feeling. You turn your mind towards emptiness. And at that point, because it's so powerful, the bliss is so powerful, it's overwhelming you. It's like the only experience you're having right there. If you're in a single point of concentration on that bliss, that's you at that moment, you know? That is your subject's state of mind, if you want to phrase it that way. So you are the bliss that you are experiencing at that moment. And you are focusing on the emptiness of that bliss. and this does something to the quality of the bliss it's no longer just a physical sensation because something happens when you when your central channel is already open from you know and it's and it's feeling a physical sensation of bliss and you turn your mind towards emptiness, then there's a corresponding mental bliss that is linked to that, that is much more stable and strong. It's like the bliss of understanding emptiness. And it's linked inseparably with the physical sensation of bliss. and it it does something to make it continue and that's what it means that it starts to become stable and it's the emptiness, it's your perception of emptiness it's your blissful understanding of emptiness at that moment that makes it stable so how do we get to this great beautiful blissful sensation um you know both the physical and mental sensations of bliss and and that perception of emptiness are coming from really intense karmic seeds that you have planted in the past. And it's the only way to get there. You know, you could, you could try all these different practices like the mudras in the third chapter are supposed to elicit this, right? But whether or not they do depends on your seeds, right? Like, you could do everything it says in that particular practice of that particular mudra, and still, you'd be sitting there and you're like, bliss hasn't come yet, emptiness hasn't come yet, and what am I doing wrong? And you have to go back to the real source, the real karmic seeds for this, which is like, serving others with love, giving to others with love. You know, bliss and compassion are the same. Bliss is the physical manifestation of your love for other people. Bottom line, if you want bliss, love other people. If you want bliss, give to other people with love. You know? That's it, you know? That's the secret, the great secret to every bliss you could ever want. Just give to other people with love. Plant karmic seeds to see bliss in your own spiritual practice. Give people the highest things. Give people the Dharma with love. Teach them. Teach them this. Teach them these holy practices. At the level that they're ready for them. I wouldn't start with the Hatha Yoga Pradipika class, course four. You know, but, you know, that's the, you know, I address this because I know there are those of you in this room who are already doing some of these practices. And sometimes I get these questions like, I'm trying to do this and this is not coming. The bliss is not coming. Well, I just told you why the bliss is not coming. So you don't have to come up to me anymore and ask me why. Now you know. You just have to plant the seeds in your own heart, and then it will come. And then you can use it to further your practice, your emptiness understanding. Yeah, I think I covered everything in this question. All right. Yeah. So I put a seed in your mind. I put a seed in your mind. So you have a body and you have a mind. And the ultimate evolution of the mind is to see emptiness directly. The best thing you can ever do your brain is to see emptiness directly. And probably the best sensation you've ever had with your body is like an orgasm. So people come up to me and they're like, that's weird, you know. You're talking about an inner process that creates an orgasm using it to trigger the highest state of mind. It seems weird. One is so low, one is so high. But they're both a result of extraordinary good karma. You see? To have a relationship with a person and to have a really deep physical relationship is hard. It's rare. Because it takes a tremendous amount of karma, of serving others, of being kind to others, of helping sick people and helping lonely people. Thousands of times is what creates one physical experience with a partner. it's a rare karma it's a very expensive karma and to understand emptiness is just as rare and just as expensive it's a parallel in the body and the mind these are the two most expensive karmas you see it's not strange that they are connected somehow but we'll get more into it so at each of the four avastas as the fluid is now rising up the central channel, you have a different perception of emptiness. And they have different names. The first one is just called Shunya. Say Shunya. Which means emptiness, right? And then the other ones have sexier names. And of course she gets to do those. No, you get to do those too. Okay. But... She gets to do them too. What does that mean? I know there's people in the here who are not really familiar with emptiness. You know, Buddhists talk a lot about emptiness, right? But here you have a Hindu text, here you have a classic yogic text. It's full of Srinita. It's talking all about emptiness. What might be a kind of insight that you are having as your yoga asana practice bears fruit, and this fluid starts flowing up your central channel? What might be an example? What you said I was suddenly going to get smart and see things under the matrix, you know? Give me an example, okay? Ah, can I use that? Here's an example, okay? Because at the end of the avistaj, you're going to see emptiness directly. But before that, they are intellectual. The first three avistaj are intellectual, right? So, let's just take one example, a glass of water, right? So if suddenly you have an insight into the glass of water during one of these other stars, you would suddenly grasp that this glass is a picture in your own mind. That as you think you are watching a glass in my hand, you are actually watching a picture in your own mind. You see? That's an insight into emptiness. the glass isn't out here there's a tiny, tiny picture, image perfect little image of the front of a glass in your mind way back behind in the back of your skull, towards the back if you bump it here you might change the picture you know, really and it's just a tiny little picture and in an Amistad experience you catch yourself doing it you see, you catch it you say, oh my god I never was seeing a glass out there that's just a tiny little picture in my mind you know and that's a kind of emptiness, why? there is no glass out there it never was there all these years. You never get it. You know, can you drink from a glass that's not dead? That's the great step Nagarjuna took. He took one more step, he said, but it all works, doesn't it? It all works. Still it all works. You see? So, an avistar experience at the first level would be something like, oh my God, that glass is in my own mind. It's a tiny little picture in my own mind, you see? You'll chew on that for years after that. You'll chew on that for years after that. But I'll give you some hints, okay? Good hints and bad hints. Let's start with bad hints, okay? If it's in your mind, you must have planted it there somehow. You know, eventually you'll learn that it comes from giving glasses to other people. water to other people. It's how you planted the little picture in your mind. What's that say about the most irritating person you know? What's that say about the most irritating person you know? They are being born from your own mind. They are being born inside your own mind like a like a larva or something. No, it's all you. If you get to the first other stuff, the implications on your future behavior are scary. Every irritating person you ever meet is coming from how you act. It has nothing to do with them any more than there's a glass of water out here. There's no irritating people in the world either. It's all coming from me. I have to clean up my own act. Iraq is coming from me. Obama is too. So that's the good news. The good news for a yogi, the good news for a yogi, suppose a yogi is in business, right? Suppose a yogi is in business. Suppose they want to see profits double next year. Well, where do they have to work? In their own mind. because that's also just a picture you see, in their own mind then it gets really scary, you know I could double my income next year if I just work on little seeds in the back of my head you know, so there's a bad side right, all the crap in the world is coming from you but there's a good side for the future if you get to the first avestad by what? by doing yoga at your local Yogi's studio, you know, I mean, then you could design your future. Whatever boy you want, whatever income you want, whatever kind of body you want, you have power now. That's the power of the avista. You see? The first avista. That's the real meaning of emptiness. Okay? So it's not some pie in the sky, close your eyes, and everything turns black tank. It's not that. you now have the power to get rid of all the irritating people in your life and you have the power to see the first black presence with a Muslim middle name you know and no, you can do anything you can do anything you can make anything you see the other stars are getting more interesting did you go into the words? I don't know when you teach it you've got to be so careful there are vows in Buddhism against teaching emptiness irresponsibly send people home thinking nothing is nothing you've broken a vow higher than killing a person in Buddhism So people should go home with, oh yeah, there's no glass. That means the guy that irritates me at work is my fault, and I can change him. You should go home like, if your students go home like that, you taught emptiness right. And if they go home thinking, oh, nothing matters, or there's no glasses, or I'm living in my head, then you taught it the wrong way. So it's a very grave responsibility to teach it well. They should go home full of hope. about what they can do tomorrow. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we'll do one more verse and then we'll take a break. Verse 71. A yogi or yogini who reaches the initial stage wins the glorious body of an angel with its divine fragrance and freedom from all illness, and their heart is totally filled with emptiness. Divya Deha is the body of an angel. Divya Gandhas is divine fragrance. Hrdaya means heart, right? And Shunya is emptiness. Samporno means full. So, this is a very interesting verse because it sounds like they're talking about the very end result of the path. You know, and we're only on the first stage. You know, so I think Master Swap Marama is giving us a taste of, like, what starts to happen to our body and our mind as we go through these four stages of bliss, these four stages of emptiness. The glorious body of an angel refers to something called the gyulu in Tibetan. Say gyulu. Gyulu. Gyulu means illusory body. And sometimes they call it diamond body. And this is the, at the end result, we talked about it a little at the beginning of class. You will get rid of this aging, decaying body of flesh and blood. And you will transform into a body of light. you will transform into an angel's body that's indestructible, that's total bliss all the time. That is the most beautiful, exquisite creature you can imagine times a billion. Like if you stopped and you went to all of the kiosks in the middle of Broadway, and you bought every single women's magazine or men's magazine or whatever you think is the most beautiful, And you picked out the most beautiful woman or man of any of those magazines and said, ah, that's who I'm going to be when I turn into my illusory body. It won't be like that. It will be a billion times more beautiful. You will be that angel. And so sometimes stop and think about that, you know. Stop and think about who you're going to be. Stop and imagine. Okay, what is the most beautiful, exquisite creature that I can imagine? Let me just picture myself like that. Only total light. And a billion times more beautiful than that. And that will be you. And Master Swamurama is reminding you of this. And he says, you know, as you get to the first stage, you start to get that body already. You know, that starts to happen to you. Like, already you are feeling lighter. You know, because of your yoga practice, maybe. Sometimes you walk out of yoga practice and you have done such a nice job with your channels that you don't feel your feet touching the ground for an hour or so. You know, that is a sign that you're starting to change from this gross, heavy body of flesh and blood with all the stuff inside to like a body of light that doesn't have anything inside at all. It's just made of light. It's hollow inside. And you start to feel that more and more. You start to identify more with your inner body than you do with your body of flesh and blood. Like you feel like, no, I'm just a body full of energy flows. You know, that's the only thing that I'm walking around in. And when you picture the inside of yourself, you don't picture it all stuffed with things anymore. You picture it just as flows of wind and prana. And that's a shift in your mind that corresponds to you getting your light body. And then, you know, maybe you start to look in the mirror and maybe suddenly something has changed and you perceive yourself as more beautiful. Your body is just as empty as that glass, right? People are like, what am I going to do with my old flesh and blood body when I get my body of light? No, it's not like that. It's not like you have to dump her somewhere to get the new one. This is all just a perception in your mind. You look down at your hand and the reason you see human hand is just because of seeds that you've planted in your heart from how you've taken care of other people in the past. You could just as easily look down at the same hand and see a hand blazing with light. Because there is no hand out here. You can look down at your own hand. There is no hand out there. The head you see, the head you feel. All of these perceptions are just images in your mind. They're just mental images, that tiny little picture. Feeling pictures. Touch pictures. Hearing pictures. They're all pictures. Every single sensation you have is just this little mental image. It's not out there. The world is not the way you think it is. Your body is not the way you think it is. And because of that, there's infinite room for change. Because of that, we can become an angel in this lifetime. Without having to die. Without having to do anything with this body. Because it just shifts on its own. And we can watch this progress. So, Master Swatma Rama is saying, at the initial stage, when the bliss is going from this area to this area of the body, we start to get that illusory body. We start to feel that already happening within ourselves. And then he says our heart is filled with emptiness. At the end result, you will be a being of light in your Buddha paradise. And you will be the most exquisite being in the face of the universe. And you will be in total bliss. But at the same time, you will be sending countless emanations of yourself out to all directions. Effortlessly, without any kind of thought about it. Just automatic. Because you can see every being in the universe. You can hear their minds. You know what they need. You know what kind of teaching and teacher they need. So you just go and you emanate right next to them. And you stay with them for as long as it takes. And at the same time, your mind is completely immersed in the direct perception of emptiness. And it's only a Buddha's mind that can do both. That can experience something in the outside world. And at the very same time, be totally immersed in the direct perception of emptiness. So this is the end result. The combination of a perfect body and a perfect mind imbued with emptiness. And they call that sumjuk in Tibetan. Say sumjuk. Sumjuk. And that means union of the two. Combination of the two. Combination of perfect body and perfect mind. But we're not quite at that stage yet, because we're only on the initial stage. So what is he talking about when he says our hearts are imbued with emptiness? They're totally filled with emptiness. You are starting to look at the world and yourself and every single experience that comes across in a much less real way. Like you are starting to clue into the fact that things are not out there coming from their own side. That they're all a little picture in your mind. And you're just projecting that. You know, so that when you walk around, in addition to feeling much lighter because you're getting your light body, you have this sense in your mind that things are much less real to you. You know, the people you meet, if someone does something kind to you, automatically you're like, that comes from a seed in my mind. I did something kind two weeks ago and it's coming back to me. And automatically your mind just goes there. You don't have to work. It's like you start to see everything that comes to you as karma. You know, everyone that comes up to you. Every interaction that you have with somebody else. If someone smiles at you, if someone frowns at you, you're like, ah, I frowned at someone earlier today, you know? And then it's all this, like, product of something in your heart, you know? You feel like this world that you're walking around in is all just, like, a product of something in your heart. And as you take the step, the next step, the next movie screen pops up, you know? The next karma ripens in your heart and, like, projects it out. and then you walk into it and then you meet your next interaction. And you start to see it that way. You start to see the world that way. It's not that there's anything behind that door. There's nothing behind that door. Except for what your own particular heart seeds are going to project when you walk out of it. You see, there's no New York. There's only the New York that you will walk out of into when you leave the studio, you know? There is only the projection coming from your heart. And when you get to this initial stage, you start to feel that. You start to feel, ah, I'm living in a projected world. I'm living in a world of my own creation. And then you get this power, like Geshe Michael was talking about. Because it's all coming from my heart, I have infinite power to change it. I can live in a city of my choosing. What do you like about New York? What do you not like about New York? You can make a list. Geshe Michael likes pizza. New York has the best pizza we've got all over the world. Definitely, it's not Shanghai, let me tell you. Shanghai probably has the worst pizza. But you get the idea, right? Yeah. Okay. We'll take a short break. I want to talk about it. Get to my thoughts. One more thing to say. I have to talk to where is I now? who do I have to talk to? we use the breaks as an excuse to meet people and to say hi and if you have personal questions that you don't want anybody else to hear or you know you just want to say hi and so we'll be sitting down here sometimes we'll have meetings that we have to do about some kind of business stuff today I personally don't have anything so if you just want to come up and say hi or introduce yourself or ask a question about something. We'll sit here. And then... Do anybody want to see? I have a few meetings with people. A poor thing that we didn't talk about in the last verse that we covered, which is divine fragrance. Which is just like a little side note, you know, of what happens when your body and mind starts to transform. And this is something in the Tibetan text called Sutram Ghi Trima. Say Sultrim. Sultrim Ghi Trima. Trima. Trima means fragrance, and Sultrim means morality. So this is like the sweet scent of a pure conscience, you could say. And this is when you have gotten so good at understanding that the world comes from you. You know, you're wandering around seeing everything as your projection in the world that you stop hurting people. And you start living your life very ethically because you understand that it's going to come back to you. So you start to see this. I don't know if you've ever met certain ordained people who have been ordained for a really long time, and they've been keeping their vows very strictly, and they've got this glow about them, and they've got this sort of radiance, and then you come up to them, and they kind of smell really good too, and they're really attractive, and it's because they've been keeping their vows. And this is what Sultrim Vitrimo means. You know, it's like this aura about you that you have when you start to keep your vows very purely because you understand that not harming others, that helping others actually comes right back to you. So it's very nice when this starts to happen. You know, it's like even when you've gone into yoga class and you did really heavy Dharma midrach class for two hours and you're totally drenched in sweat because it's the middle of the summer, and you come out and you still smell good. It's like a miracle, you know? It's like even your sweat smells really good. And it's true. It's true. It happens, you know? Your body changes. And you start to become a different kind of being. And that's just one of the signs that you can look for. That's all. Thank you. element moves to the central channel. Sometimes it's connected to four stages of the death process. And I thought I would talk about that for a minute, because I don't know if we'll have a lot of time. So as you black out, you die, right? At the last moments of your death. Things are happening in that channel also. Elements are moving, winds are moving in the main channel of the body as you die also. And it's said that there's a tiny little ball at your heart. It's called say, mishik. Mishik. Pe. Tigle. Mishik pe Tigle. So this is called the indestructible drug. And then there's a big debate in the monastery. Well, doesn't it fall apart when you die? And they say, yes. Well, then it's not indestructible, is it? And they say, well, in this life it's indestructible. Meaning, in this life it stays there. Until you die, it stays intact in your heart. And it's connected to all of the thoughts, all of the words, all of the actions you've ever done in your life, recorded in a tiny chip in the area of your heart. So really your karmic storehouse is related to a tiny space in your heart. It's physical, but it's made of very subtle light. If you cut open the body, you won't see it. But it's still physical. In the way that light passing from the wall to me is physical, but you can't touch it. So, as you die, then the elements that we've been describing as moving down to your body and up in your body and causing these experiences of understanding, they collect inside this tiny ball of light. at the heart. They collect there. And then you go through a standard series of hallucinations that you have each been through countless times. Because you have died countless times. And you have this, you have a subconscious memory of it. When I speak of it, you remember it. So first you go through a, this is the final stages of the death process. You go through a white light. Sort of a very, what do you call it? Luminous white light. It's called, in Tibetan it's called Nang. Say Nang. It means a luminous white light. And then Che, say Che. Che means then it passes into a crimson light. Into an experience of a crimson light. And then Tok, say Tok. Tok. "Nir top" means almost there. And then it's like blackness. Like when you look up on a black night. Black empty sky. "Nang che top" And then you go into a thing called "Usel" "Usel" That's clear light. It means clear light. like a light that's made of water, like a light that is of the color of perfect water. Like when you look into a stream of perfect crystal water and you just see the bottom, right? The stone's at the bottom of the stream and you don't see the water, right? That light is made of that color. So the first three are like colors, right? White light, red light, black. But then it's just like the color of clear water. And you're having this experience of the color of clear water. And that's called the clear light. Every person who ever dies has these experiences. Each time they die, they have these different experiences of these different kinds of light, and then just clear, clarity, right? the last one is very close to seeing emptiness the clear light of death is very close to the perception of emptiness it's a natural gathering of the winds and the elements of the body in the same spot you need to get them to see emptiness but this is by nature, it's by karma everyone has it everyone goes through this moment and you reach out the clarity the water clarity suggests to your mind something you're just about to get the thing about the glass that there were never any glasses you're just about to get that and then boom you're forced onto the what we call bottom you're forced into the next step you have no choice you're like oh I'm just about to get whoop! And then you're always, your karma always takes you like a subway. You know, it grabs you and you're gone. And then you're just, you're just like a spirit and you're wandering and you're afraid and you're terrified and it hurts and you're confused and you're looking for some comfort and then finally you see your parents in your next life. And you see them making love and you're attracted because you think someone is comforting someone. and then they say the karma ends the karma to be able to pass through solid things ends you're like a ghost until then, you can pass through walls but then they say the karma changes with the flesh of your mother's womb like you hit that and then you can't pass it you can no longer pass through solid things and then you're trapped there and then you begin again then you begin your life again so there's a tiny moment in everyone's lifetime when by nature the elements and the winds collected the heart and you can almost see emptiness. It's that clear light stage. So as you go through the four other spots, as the elements rise up to the body, then there's a chance, you have a moment's chance. You go through the same visions. You have a white light, you see a crimson light, blackness, and then you have a chance something deeper. And a yogi, at the fourth avastā, they can grab the moment. And they can see emptiness at that moment, directly. That's different from seeing the thing about the cup. The thing about the cup is an intellectual understanding. You know, I explained to you how something is a picture in your mind and then it's no longer out there. But what if you just got it and suddenly there is nothing more out there? you see? and you pass to a separate reality that's a higher reality so that in the fourth avastar the yogi has the power to to approach the experience of death and then switch it and then see something higher if you see that thing within a short time your body will change to life so that's a big deal if you can grab the fourth avastar as the moment passes. In a short time, you can change your body into life. And when we say that, we don't mean that you walk around like a billboard. We mean that you can help people on countless planets. You can be on every bus in New York at the same moment, sitting next to every person on every bus, helping them. You know, you turn to them and say, What did that guy say in the class tonight about the Abbas? And you're like, whoa. And you can be everything for everybody. You see, when we say turn into light, the implication is to turn into an angel who can be sitting next to everybody in the city at the same time. And turn to them and say some wacky thing that suddenly helps them get enlightened. You see, it's a very cool way to live, right? so if you can grab the the last avastar you can get there that's the ticket to the to sitting on all those buses yeah okay see yeah okay So we'll close the class with the meditation. It's late and it's hot and you won't get this again, so pay attention. Get your body still. Make sure you're in a comfortable position and then just don't move. Close your eyes, focus on the tip of your nose. Watch the air as it flows out and then back into your body. Obrigado. Picture yourself with a body of light, most beautiful creature you can imagine. So, everything empty like clear blue sky go down inside from the top of your head down to the tips of your toes make sure everything is nothing but hollow clear blue sky Then running down the center of your body where your backbone used to be is a brilliant tube of light. At the top of your head, at the tip of this tube of light is a white moon. This bone disc represents the white element in your body. At the very base of this tube, at the bottom is a red disc of the sun. Picture them small inside the tube of light. Then draw your focus into the tube until it encompasses your whole experience. The red disc at the bottom is quite hot, it's fire. It starts to send heat up slowly through the channel. Feel the heat rising through the tube of light. It starts to rise to the level of the navel, then to the level of the heart. As the fire in the sun When the disc burns brighter and hotter down at the base, it rises up the heat to the level of the throat. And then the heat starts to rise up to the moon disc at the tip of the You can picture them sliding down the inside of the tube of light from the tip of the head to the throat, from the throat to the heart. From the heart to the navel. And from the navel to your sexual organ. bringing on a state of bliss. And as the bliss comes, the central channel starts to open, your wisdom starts to surface. You focus on the bliss. and ask yourself, where is it coming from? It's a mental image produced by your own goodness. And it's nothing more than that. Where is this list? If you look for its location you won't find it anywhere. And so you rise to the first other star. Ananda Shunya and the bliss reverses and travels back up the central channel to the middle And that's all we're going to do for today. You can slowly open your eyes. So sometimes things come to people like, I don't know, when you practice this or maybe sometimes when you're not practicing. Master Swadmarama talks about different sounds that are related to these stages, these different stages. Like he says, sometimes it's like a drum beating inside your body. And then in the later stages, it's like a loop or a flute being played inside of you. It's like the inner winds are moving in a way that they start to sing to you. And you can have these experiences. It's the experience of the winds as they enter in the central channel, actually. And sometimes you will experience them when you're not even expecting it. You know, like little, I don't know, suddenly there will be a shift in reality for a minute. and it'll be like some sort of internal explosion, or like, you know, happens. And the winds have moved for a brief moment into your central channel and then out again, you know. Or you'll get these like shockwave things. People like we're doing during the meditation, if you were sitting next to one of them, you know, please, they can't help themselves. It's a good thing. It's a really good thing. The winds entering into the central channel. So even if you look weird, sometimes it happens during yoga. Sometimes during Shavasana, after you're lying there and you've done all this work on your channels and then you let yourself relax for a minute after you've done all that really powerful outer center kind of work. And then something will shift because you've been pushing the winds towards the center. And then the moment you relax, they just start to automatically flow there because of all your work. And then you experience, sometimes you experience wild things, you know, like visions or sounds or, you know, internal combustion explosion things happening in your body. All of these are really good signs, you know, of the wind starting to get into the central channel. Master Swatma Rama emphasizes the sound because right now we're on a section in the fourth chapter called Nada Yoga. So he uses the sound, focus on those sounds to get to an understanding of emptiness. And that's a practice in itself that we're going to be talking about a little bit more, maybe on the seventh and eighth day of this teaching. Right. So? Just a practical suggestion. You have to pace yourself for these eight days. I suggest you don't go to bed later than two. There's this thing about the sun. If you don't get to bed by two this time of year, then you won't be well rested for the next day. And then you won't be able to hear the teaching well. So try to get to bed as early as you can, even though we're going late. Does that include us, Kishin Michael? No. Pace yourself so that you're not burned out by the air. We go late because we want... There's more to cover than we can cover in eight days. We will go late. But you have to try to get some sleep also. And try to budget your time and your sleep to be fresh as you can. Okay? But do your own work. We'll do a mandala of thanks. If you don't know it, you do what I did in the Mahasana for 20 years. Aum! I have a few things. So just giving thanks to all the Lamas of the lineage that have passed on this holy practice in a pure strange dread to you. Satsang with Mooji Yidong Nanda I am the Lord. no way down what Thank you. See you tomorrow.